Gear Head, I somewhat agree, but as I said it depends why you collect. I don't consider Tamiya collectable, for me I look for 60s era kits....almost pre-Tamiya. As for those who reissue yep, but there is usually a difference. Anyway collecting kits is a personal thing and as far as I am concerned a hobby unto itself.

Then again watch American Pickers....why in the hell do 10% of the people collect some of the junk they do.

Also the understanding in my house, the wife does not question the kit collection, I do not question the QVC items.....marital bliss

Rounds Complete!!

I can understand how automotive kits could become collectible. There are annual changes in tooling, In some cases like Johan the molds are lost. Then there is the whole licensing issue. The "Blue Beetle" pickup from 1964 will always be worth more the the "Blue Bandit" reissue because of the legally required name change.

Military vehicle kits are often reissued repeatedly. Tamiya has never even changed their box art.  Revell  often reissues their  fifties era 1/40th scale and 1/32 Ranwal kits. The same with Airfix. It's hard for something to become collectible if it is not out of production for sometime.  

Ah, yes, those various missile kits. I remember buying the reissue Redstone missile while stationed at Redstone Arsenal. I saved it for my now 17 yr old son who was born when we were at Redstone. Just like I bought the Italeri USS Ronald Reagan for my 10 yr old son Reagan, who was born shortly after the resident died. He also got a Beanie Baby from the USS Ronald Reagan.

Rob, yep the old armor kits were 1/40....I was thinking of some of the old Revell missile kits in box scale. Those I have collected. then there is the space kits....ahhh the 60s....oh well showing my age.

For me having those old kits on the shelf like the Adams Honest John bring back memories of a time long past. The box art, 2 or 3 sprues tops, and a tube of glue!!

A hobby is what you enjoy. I enjoy collecting some of the old kits thus to me it is a hobby unto itself. I can understand some of my friends here like Karl and Gino who don't collect. Everyone is different. Even among armor builders we are all different....some just do German, some Shermans, some modern, I do only US Artillery and support equipment. It is what makes you happy.

The collector kits on my shelves are a piece of my childhood that I can visit anytime I go into my studio.

That's what makes this fun.

Rounds Complete!!

I saw one of those Shermans, built OOB, no paint, on a cardboard display, looked like a manufacturer's promo model. It was in a display case that hadn't been opened in 20 years or so, buried in the corner of a "Hobby, Bait and Framing" shop.

I'm not making this up. It's an old (really old) hobby shop that the owners started doing framing out of in the 80's and then the grandson of the owner sells live bait out of the back. The Sherman was there along with a lot of other promos, all OOB, no paint.

redleg12

Rob, have to agree....the 60s and 70s for me was a kit was it. You only built what came in the box. Now we have the kit with...PE, metal barrels, indy tracks, resin stowage. Then we complain about the cost of the kit and we spend two to three times as much on the add on items. Don't get me wrong, the detail is fantastic, but it can be daunting!

Sometimes it is nice to build an old Revell box scale kit!

Rounds Complete!!  

The challenge today would be to build it straight OOB!

the doog

Gotta be honest here; in my world, there's no such thing as a "collectible" kit of any genre. Model kits are fer buildin'; stamps are for collectin'!

If you're not going to build a kit, sell it to someone who will, I say!

Actually by that rationale...  Stamps are for mailing stuff.    beanie babies are for collecting!

I agree with you.  Models kits are for building.

Rob, have to agree....the 60s and 70s for me was a kit was it. You only built what came in the box. Now we have the kit with...PE, metal barrels, indy tracks, resin stowage. Then we complain about the cost of the kit and we spend two to three times as much on the add on items. Don't get me wrong, the detail is fantastic, but it can be daunting!

Sometimes it is nice to build an old Revell box scale kit!

Rounds Complete!!  

I see the common thread, but also a sign of the times; those 1980s kits were the first of the well engineered Tamiya kits and before the dawn of the "always needs aftermarket" days. I probably covered more Tamiya motorization holes with the flat pieces of their sprues than with putty back in the day. They were fun to build and back then there wasn't the desire to find PE, aluminum barrels and aftermarket tracks!

Hmmmm, favorites to buy and build from the '70s thru the '90s?  

Mine (that I can think of now) would be:

Any of the Tamiya Shermans with the T48 tracks, fun builds, and they're going cheap at model shows.

Same for Tamiya M60 variants, fun builds and with a little basic modeling can be turned into a good model.

Tamiya  (I see a common theme here) Merkava1, same as above but needs a lot of TLC.

After thinking about it a bit, I may be biased in that I really enjoy the older, basic but well-engineered Tamiya kits. It could be just how I enjoy the hobby, or that a Tamiya Sherman was how I got back into the hobby I put aside when I got my driver's license.

Field Boots, yep...had them and yes they exist!. I have the books you mentioned also. They are great for someone of my age to get the "history" of plastic modeling. They give a good list of the kits manufactured by those particular manufacturers.

For those of us who do collect all of those books are a "requirement"

Rounds Complete!!.

I have at least four books dealing with model collecting. There's the Bob Reder Monogram book, the Remembering Revell book, Greenburg's Aurora book and a hard back book about the 50 years of Airfix.

It was model collectors that allowed Moebius to reproduce long lost molds of kits like the Aurora Spider-Man and many of the Batman series kits. Monogram had scrapped many of the molds for their metal value without regard to the kit subject. Apparently Aurora used a fairly valuable metal because of the detail it was able to take with the figure molds.

It reminds me of a discussion with an old sergeant major regarding "field boots." Field boots are older combat boots you wore to the field. Soldiers often kept a pair of inspection boots for special occasions all spit shined and pretty. Field boots basically got a good brush shine in garrison and then crammed in the bottom of the duffle bag for field time. They also kept a decent set of every day boots to wear.

The sergeant major said field boots didn't exist. I argued that they do exist since they are a fact of life in most soldiers' gear. I said you're kidding yourself if you deny it. Let's ask some random soldiers and see if they have a pair in their room. He didn't want to because he said he knows we'd find them.

I suspect he had a pair of field boots too. I know I had a pair of boots I only wore in the field and a pair of spit shined tankers boots that never went to the field.

I have to agree with Rob and El Taino. Collecting the kits is a hobby unto itself. Besides being my retirement package....enough to keep me busy building through my retirement, I also like to collect some of the old kits I remember from my childhood. Some of the old kits from the 60s can be fun!.

The key to all is do you enjoy it, if you enjoy collecting, make a hobby of it, then just fine.

As for a list....back in the 90s there was a book...

The Collectors Value Guide for Scale Model Plastic Kits by John W. Burns. I have a copy of the Sixth Edition which was published in 1994. Fantastic book for a list of all the old and some obscure kits.

Hummmmm...another hobby....book collecting dealing with the hobby.....but that is another thread!

Rounds Complete!!

El Taino

PS,

Collecting model kits for some model builders is a hobby within the hobby.

Well said.

PS,

Collecting model kits for some model builders is a hobby within the hobby.

Yeah, back in the 70's and 80's action figures and accessories were torn opened because they were supposed to be opened and be played with (Star Wars anyone?) But what happened to those who left some in their packages for some unknown reason? You may have heard the story.

A few years ago Hasbro launched the action figures even on a vintage packaging replica and that did not decreased the value of the original ones. Same happens with model kits unlike some don't recognize them as collectible items as Rob Gronovious mentioned before me. No newer release or rebox replica will decrease the price because kit collectors are very clear of what they want. My LHS has a section for collector kits. They are not for sale but if you really want 'em the price is on them (hundreds of dollars).

Phil, all due respect, you feel that it is mean to buy a kit and keep it because the practice will leave someone without a particular kit to build (not these days). Isn't it mean to hold kits back because you will build them one day or plan on leaving those kits on your will?

I believe there is a difference between collecting to store and collecting desirable, hard -to-find kits AND building them.  

That said,

What are your 5 most desirable kits you would buy and build from the 70's through the 90's?

Thanks,

Leddy

I see similarities between" collectible" kits and wine. Since I've been in the wine business, I see a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of very nice, drinkable wines being stored away, never to be enjoyed, in the hope that they'll increase in value. Generally this means the wine is lost to it's intended end-user and probably will never be enjoyed as and when it's meant to be.

So....    I build kits, only have a "collection" because I buy a little (read: lot) faster than I build, and any wine I buy gets consumed within a month or two of buying.

I only wish (maybe) that I built models at the same rate I consume wine.

A long time ago while stationed in Germany, I bought a bunch of Japanese motorized tank kits. I probably paid the equivalent of $5-10 for each one. I loved building the motorized Tamiya kits in the late 70s and early 80s as a kid. I fully intended to build the carpet crawlers but never got around to it.

A few years back, I discovered many of these kits in an overlooked moving box that had been virtually unopened for several cross country moves. I decided to through them on eBay and a Japanese collector bought them for quite a lot of money. Some of the Tamiya Mokei 1/50 scale motorized kits like the Crusader and T92 Airborne tank got well over $100 a piece. I ended up using the money to buy newer kits that I had an interest in.

There are plenty of collectible kits out there. Anyone who fails to recognize it has their head in the sand. As a kid, I used to love the old MPC Pirates of the Caribbean models. They were usually a pirate or skeleton that had a rubber band powered action like a swing sword arm. These 1970s era kits were rather crude and made with very soft plastic that MPC was infamous for. They are not very good kits but are very valuable to Disney memorabilia collectors. A good number of these collectors are probably not model builders. Glencoe originally got their start by reissuing old Strombecker Disney Tomorrowland space craft kits that were too expensive and hard to find because of collectors.

A lot of the Aurora 1/48 scale model kits and older Renwal kits were not worth building because they've been replaced by better, more modern tooled kits. The Renwal kits have been reissued and are being built up and a lot of the 1/48 scale Aurora subjects have been released by Tamiya. Why spend twice as much on an old Aurora kit when you can get a newer version for less money from Tamiya or Hobby Boss? One of the better Aurora kits was their Sherman tank. It probably runs about $30 or so on eBay. A better Hobby Boss kit runs about $15-20.

Bottom line is that these model kits were produced to be built and it is your money and your model to do with as you wish. But it would be odd to fail to recognize that there is a market for many of the older kits. Even partially built glue bombs of vintage kits are sometimes worth more than comparable new kits.

Oh yeah, I love those guys who buy a vintage toy in the cellophane just to set it on the shelf to look at it- it's a friggin' toy - pull it out and play with it!!!

Bad as buying a hot rod and leaving it in the garage and never driving it!

Everything I buy I intend to build someday, though at this rate I'll be pushing up daises long before I get to all of them.  

I must agree with previous statements.

I buy with the intent of building the kit.

One good thing about ridiculously high prices on some kits:

when the price increases enough to indicate a strong demand, somebody either re-issues the kit or makes new molds of the subject.

Many of my most recent purchases are of re-issued kits.

I don't buy high price "collectibles" .

@Leddy: I sure among serious toy collectors, there is a sub-group of model collectors who create a market for these. I would suggest you trawl the internet for those sites and ask around.  

I've been modeling for about 40 yrs.  I certainly know that in theory, some old kits are collectors items (like stuff made in the 50s and 60s).  There are other kits that end up fetching high prices due to momentary market demands due to rarity -- such as some Cyberhobby Tiger I kits. Inherently, these kits' value rises b/c of the instant demand.  But I wouldn't call them "collectables".  Some might.

Would I acquire one just to let it sit and appreciate?  No way.  Not my cup of tea.

I used to buy kits that were rare and I had the idea that "It'd be cool to build THAT one day".  Then I realized that, given my rate of model completion and the changes in the marketplace (companies releasing kits that were previously only the purview of resin makers), holding on to kits that likely would be issued in injection plastic -- would be quite foolish.  Also, I realized that unless the kit I had possessed an almost zero likelihood of being kitted in plastic AND that I would likely get to building it within the next TEN years, then I would put it on the pile to sell/trade away.

I culled probably 75% of my stash, including many resin "rare" kits.  I also lucked out -- I sold off kits that while pricey at the time, dropped in value because they were overtaken by a new-release injection kit.

Among the kits that used to be in my stash were these "rarities" that eventually got sold/traded away -- before their plastic alternatives were released:

Azimut DUKW

MiniArt Studios (Hong Kong) Karl Morser

Airmodel Karl Morser

CMK Karl Morser

Sovereign Sdkfz 11 tractor

Gunze Panther G

Gunze StuG III

Gunze Pz III

Gunze 5cm Pak 38

Gunze 2cm Flak 30

Commanders Char D2

Azimut Sexton

Criel 8.8cm Flak 18

S Models Staghound

Commanders Soviet B-4 203mm cannon

Verlinden 8.8cm Pak 43/41

Azimut 8.8cm Pak 41

Gunze 10.5cm leFH 18 German light howitzer

Verlinden 15cm siG 33

Accurate Armour T26E4 Super Pershing

AccArmour Humber scout car

IMA Churchill tank

S Models 40mm Bofors AA gun

Tamiya 75mm Pack Howitzer (white metal)

I have to agree with the others, why??  I don't see any kit as collectible either.

I have to agree with the doog here. I've never baught a kit with the idea of keeping it unmade. I have a good stash at over 280 and some very rare kits but I plan on building them all (as long as I can live that long). I have been told about people who just buy kits and keep them unmade but that to me is just stopping someone else building it which seems a bit mean to me.

Having said all this I have seen a few of my rarer kits on Ebay going for silly money and I have been tempted to sell them but then a little voice says "No your going to build that one day". If nothing else the person I've left all my stash to in my last will and testament will be happy.

Phil

Gotta be honest here; in my world, there's no such thing as a "collectible" kit of any genre. Model kits are fer buildin'; stamps are for collectin'!

If you're not going to build a kit, sell it to someone who will, I say!

I know the old Aurora kit of the German Raider Atlantis is rare and fetches big bucks.Cyberhobby DAK Tiger fetches a bit on Ebay.

Vintage model kits not the ones already put together.

Thanks,

Leddy

Are you speaking about pre assembled stuff like from Franklin Mint or vintage plastic model kits unassembled.